Part of the fun of NFL draft season is guessing which team will take which player, which team needs a particular player and where a player might fit the best. As fans, we often hold these debates in the context of a mock draft.
We even do our own mock draft here at Arrowhead Pride and much all of April is spent debating why a particular mock draft is right or wrong.
So do the Chiefs join the fun and create their own mock drafts?
Not really.
In our interview with Chiefs GM Scott Pioli last week, he said teams creating their own mock drafts was a little more prevalent years ago, especially when he was with the Cleveland Browns in the 1990s. The problem, he says, was that the time and effort you put into it may not always be worth it.
"What you have to do when you do a mock draft -- the way it was done -- each scout would have their own team. Like, you'd be the Jacksonville Jaguars and I'd be the Green Bay Packers and you'd actually simulate a draft and make picks. This was back in Cleveland and a lot of teams used to do it that way. I'm not sure but I've heard teams still do it that way. It was a very time consuming and energy consuming process that I always felt took away from....it was time that could have been better used."
Pioli then delivered this great quote: "I'm not into sizzle. I'm into substance." He says a mock draft where you assign each scout a team can easily morph into being more about "sizzle" than "substance".
"If you know the league well enough and if your pro personnel department and your leadership department knows the league, what their needs are and what people normally do -- not that it always stays true to history -- but there is a pretty good likelihood, if you know what their needs are, you have an idea [of what they'll do with the pick].
"But to go through the old school mock draft process isn't something we do. You pay attention to it and try to get a general sense of who might be at 21 but I would say 8 out of 10 drafts things fall pretty much....the group of players you predict to be gone are gone. There's an occasional surprise."
It only takes one surprise to really screw up mock drafts. Last year, for example, it was Tyson Alualu going to the Jacksonville Jaguars at the 10th overall pick. That was a rather large surprise for most mock drafters and presumably teams as well.
So any dreams of Scott Pioli's mock draft getting leaked aren't realistic, unfortunately. But it makes you wonder just how accurate his mock draft could be if he says 8 out of 10 drafts go "pretty much" the way he thinks it will. That's not to say he's nailing every pick but it sounds like he can nail down some of the players each team may think about drafting.